With the rise of the Internet, users have come to access web sites on a daily basis for both personal and business use. As part of a web browsing experience, users may download and install portable executables (PEs) from web sites. Unfortunately, while users may generally trust that web sites and/or the PEs that they download from the same are not malicious and will not harm their computers or data, not all web domains are safe.
Malicious web domains may harm users, their data, or their computers in a variety of ways. For example, a web domain may host software (e.g., a malicious JAVA script) that immediately runs when a user accesses the web site. The malicious software or script may then infect or damage the user's computer. Similarly, a user may download a PE from a web domain that infects or harms the user's computer when the user installs the PE. Web domains may also host software that, when installed, resides on a user's machine and silently monitors the user's activity without authorization,
In view of the above, it may be desirable for users to ascertain the maliciousness of a web domain before attempting to access that web domain. For example, a user that has previously been the victim of malicious software located at a malicious domain may later remember that the domain is malicious. The user may, therefore, refuse to access that domain again in the future. The user may also learn from one or more other users, who may themselves have been the victims of a malicious web domain, that a particular web domain has a reputation for being malicious. Such manual methods are, however, inefficient and/or generally unreliable. As such, the instant disclosure identifies a need for improved systems and methods for classifying web domains.